Thursday, August 13, 2009

So so very very angry over $40.17

I got home from my trip to Europe a few weeks ago and got my credit card bill, only to see that I was charged $40.17 for a phone call that lasted less than 5 minutes. I called my credit card and the customer service rep I spoke to said not in so many words that she sees people upset about this particular company's charges all the time. Seriously, I once called a friend on a cell phone in rural Togo and only got charged a dollar a minute. Even if I had used the whole 5 minutes I was charged for, the cost would have been 8.34$ a minute!

The company is International Satellite Communications and they're in San Ysidro,CA, so essentially, they're in Tijuana - and they charge credit cards for payphone calls in Spain... don't you just loooove globalization?!

Anyway, I'm furious. I kind of disliked Spain to begin with, it was hot, it smelled bad, the people we dealt with were rude and/or shady, the only nice Spanish speakers we met there turned out to be from South America.

I rarely travel anywhere that I don't find anything to like about a place... but I actually can't think of much that was good about Spain.

Well, it was kind of fun watching the pickpockets and hookers plying their trade on Las Ramblas.... but that's a bit of a stretch as a good quality about a place, isn't it?

I won't even bother getting into my frustration with the ridiculous service charges the landlord for the flat we rented levied on us. But at least I had the option to walk away from that shady deal because it was face to face. I never agreed to pay this amount for that phone call, and I'm going to have to pay it whether I like it or not.

4 comments:

Further research reveals that this company has an F rating from the Better Business Bureau, and get this, Visa can revoke this company's licence, but hasn't done it despite numerous complaints from their customers.